Just want to share my nightmare

probably just preparing you and being realistic. Tracing wires and fishing down walls and troubleshooting can get expensive quickly. Someone recently told me a story about how they called a plumber and the plumber didn't know how to fix the pipe so he fiddled with it for like 6 hours and accomplished basically nothing. He didn't pay the bill because the plumber should have known what he was doing. I completely agree, but this doesn't apply to searching for an electrical problem. A loose connection can sometimes take a good part of a day to find. Not saying that's what you have, but troubleshooting can get expensive.

Just want to share my nightmare

Ok, so more discoveries...

There are two panels in my house - the main in the basement that is divided into four sections -

section 1 - two 30 amp breakers that have nothing running to them
section 2 - two 40 amp breakers that run to the second floor panel
section 3 - two 60 amp breakers that power section 4
section 4 - 15 and 20 amp breakers

So, I shut off the upstairs panel (five 15 amp breakers) in theory that would shut off the upstairs power. No.

The upstairs panel runs: all overhead lights on the second floor, all overhead lights on the first floor, all overhead lights in the basement, four outlets on the first floor (including the refrigerator.)

Um... yeah...

Re-running the outlets won't be a big deal, I just have to fish the wire through to the basement, and in should be able to use the existing wire (assuming it's romex) but tie it in to the basement panel.

But I'm worried about the lights. I had thought that I would just start over with the new wire removing the KaT completely but that may not be possible.

I wanted to be pulling wires by now, but instead I'm mapping circuits. ARGH!

Just want to share my nightmare

Maybe after the kids go to sleep I'll take some time to tell ya about my house, if something worse would make you feel better. Some of it you can find from my blogs and my posting history.

I gotta get some pics of the 4" thick tree roots I'm cutting out of the dirt so I can dig for footers to support the house. The house is on concrete blocks, some of which are really chimney tubes or something. That's the project of the moment.

But my electrical was way worse than yours, and right after the PoCo connected my new service entrance a tree fell on it. We did not loose power.

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Please do NOT consider any "before" picture of my house as any kind of endorsement of any particular construction method. In fact, you should probably assume that if I post a "before" picture, I am posting it because I am soliciting advice on a proper replacement for one of MANY things done wrong by a previous owner.

Just want to share my nightmare

Consult an electrician. Do not attempt to do this on your own. Knob and tube systems are EXTREMEMLY dangerous! Electricians have specialized tools that they can use to drill through the fire breaks in the walls, and can do it without hurting your existing drywall.

Just want to share my nightmare

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toofarfromfenwa

Consult an electrician. Do not attempt to do this on your own. Knob and tube systems are EXTREMEMLY dangerous! Electricians have specialized tools that they can use to drill through the fire breaks in the walls, and can do it without hurting your existing drywall.

Wouldn't really call it "specialized tools" a 4' drill bit isn't that special. Can probably be bought at any box store. The skill set to actually get it fished on the other hand can't be bought

Just want to share my nightmare

Well, I spent three and a half hours with an electrician today. We went through the entire house top to bottom.

Second floor breaker box (two 40 amp circuits) runs all overhead lights in the entire house, including the basement. It also runs the refrigerator, all of the outlets on the second floor and a couple on the first floor.

Basement breakers (two 60 amp) run the furnace, the washer and drier, and the rest of the outlets in the house.

The real work involved here is time and figuring out what to attach where to balance loads. Obviously, the refrigerator needs its own circuit, I already wired the furnace to its own right after we bought the house. All of the first floor outlets need to go to the basement, as do the basement lights.

I appreciate the input, but knob and tube isn't dangerous, when you shut the power off it's just a lot of copper in the walls. ;-) The only KaT I'm leaving is what runs the overhead lights on the first floor, I'm not willing to rip out walls or even poke unnecessary holes in them to fix something that is working fine, nine overhead lights will be on KaT, probably on their own circuit, but maybe sharing with the attic or something with other low draw.

I only have drywall in one room in the house, the laundry room, which I gutted and rewired. And as the previous poster said, four foot drill bits are not all that special - not that they are all that useful in plaster walls. We find the fire breaks, drill above and below, put a hole through the board, run the wire, plug the hole, patch the wall. Obnoxious and time consuming, but easier to patch than the first one we did (cut a four by six inch hole, hacked a notch in the fire break, then put a big patch up... And my plaster skills are rather lacking, so there is a bookcase there now )

Just want to share my nightmare

Quote:

Originally Posted by jimmy21

The skill set to actually get it fished on the other hand can't be bought

The patience, the ability to reason through all of the balancing and re-mapping, the patience to run wire through plaster and lathe walls, the patience to chase down ghosts, the patience to run wire between plaster and brick, the patience.... and oh, did I mention the patience of a saint? (Which I don't have...)

He offered me an hourly rate that was quite reasonable, and said that if I wanted to help the work would go faster and he'd be able to teach me along the way (my benefit) have an extra set of hands to get it done (his benefit in frustration, my benefit in expense.)

So we mapped all of the lights and outlets to their respective circuits tonight. And I'm currently working on where all of their new circuits are going to be. I'm going to get some headway on that tonight, and tomorrow we're going to start pulling wires to see how it will go. We know there are firebreaks in the interior walls, but I don't believe there are any in the exterior walls so the walls present very different challenges.

Exterior walls only have two inches of clearance between the lathe and brick, but that is made smaller by the plaster coming through. Interior walls have a much larger space, even accounting for lathe on both sides, but they have firebreaks that appear to be at staggered heights. ARGH!

We're just going to work on pulling wires on new outlets. Since all of the outlets are moving, I can leave the romex sticking out in the attic and in the rooms until my circuit mapping is reviewed and ok'd by someone who knows what they are doing. To meet code in the bedrooms, we have to pull 24 wires, so I'm quite sure that we'll be busy for a while!! If by some miracle of God we get that done in the next few weeks, we can move to upstairs overhead lights, which are staying on the same circuit, but will all be new wires.

When all of that is done, hopefully he'll be done with the work he's on now, and can come and go over my circuit mapping and we'll start hooking things up.

On the bright side, I got some new tools today , including an infrared laser thermometer. My excuse for that was to find studs by temperature difference in the walls - which isn't working the way it did with the professional one that they used at my Energy Star audit. I don't think this one is sensitive enough, but I did find out that my thermostats are ten degrees off. The wall was 50, the thermostat itself was 50, the batteries in the thermostat were 50, the thermostat said 60. I turned it up to 65, and now everything is reading about 60... upstairs it was set to 55, and just about everything was in the upper 40's. I don't mind it cool, but that's just ridiculous!!!

Just want to share my nightmare

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim Port

You may not need to map out the out if you just install new around it. Once the new is installed and working you would just remove the old.

Well, I can't change the overhead lights for the first floor - they have to stay together, and they have to go to the second floor. I can, however, put the outlets and plugs on the second floor to any of the other remaining four circuits.

And it just dawned on me that I already have service from the basement running to the second floor, so I can easily tie second floor power down to the basement if I want to do that, but honestly I don't think I need to considering what that panel has already been doing. (Like running my refrigerator, which just blows my mind!)

I have most of it on a spreadsheet right now, but it's making my brain hurt. Tomorrow I'm going to write a program and see if it will balance the loads for me - or at least calculate them on the fly so I can keep them even.

Sorry for the eight million posts... but writing it all out seems to get it straight in my head. And I'm always open to suggestions and input.